Chapter 109: A Few New Things

Wednesday, March 12, 1986

I had to switch gears a bit. Today was a Darla day, and Darla deserved my focus.

I had an idea what we were going to try. It made total sense to me, and I was nearly certain Darla would love it, but ... well. Grandma and her basket were going to need to be ready for consultation, anyway. Darla knew the rules, but it had been a while since we’d done anything where I really worried about any time-outs being called. This might be different.

Jas would be involved tonight. How involved was anyone’s guess. The ‘date’ part of the night would just be Darla and me. Darla, unlike Amy, wasn’t dating Jas. I was pretty sure girls were always going to be secondary for Darla. Perhaps welcome, and fun, but only in context with her guy bringing in a girl.

Amy, at least for now, seemed to be very different. Gender roles might matter, but they could be ... flexible, perhaps. I was fairly sure she would form attachments to people she liked regardless of what sex they happened to be, and act on those attachments without any particular concern for what body parts might be involved.

I couldn’t do that, I was nearly certain. Maybe, in some highly unusual case, I could love a guy so much that the body parts could work for me. However, I suspected it might be as hard for me to do anything there as it was for Cammie. Some things might work, maybe. Partly. Some just wouldn’t.

I had a houseful of girls who collectively made an argument for the ‘girls are different’ theory. That might have just been luck, though. Cammie and Sherry were ‘gold star’ lesbians, or so I’d been repeatedly told. Cammie, obviously, had some flexibility. Sherry might well have none.

Aside from that, though, Jas, Angie, and Paige were all very much bisexual, and Mel seemed to be as well. Candice was an unusual case. If not for an evil man doing his best to ruin her, she might never have even explored her bisexual side, but now she was, for all intents and purposes, fully lesbian.

Darla was somewhat flexible. Amy was highly flexible.

In any case, the people around me made for an entirely anecdotal view of female bisexuality being common. I was pretty sure there were plenty of bi guys out there, though. Heck, Cal was one, or so I’d been told. I just didn’t know any others.

And there were plenty of purely straight women out there, too. Claire, for instance. It’s just that most of the women who were close to me were bisexual or lesbian.

I didn’t want to just take Darla home and fool around. Oh, we could have, no doubt about it. We didn’t need a ‘date’ as a lead-in. Still, it felt right to do more.

One of the local theaters saved me. They were showing ‘Pretty in Pink’ at a time that would work perfectly for us. I’d seen it at least twice, but the last time was over a decade ago. Since it was a 1986 movie, knowing nothing about it seemed like the right call.

I would probably see it again. Angie would want to, and the rest of the girls would likely want to as well. It wasn’t my favorite of the John Hughes classics, but it was generally solid, albeit with a few regrettable bits.

The best of them, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, was due sometime soon. I couldn’t wait to see it again (and for the first time, if possible — I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen it on release day in my first life). We might even rearrange who sat with whom for that movie. Angie and I would connect to it in a way none of the others would, after all.

A&M was having its ‘Spring 86 Micro Fair’ today. It was basically a showcase for the various models of computers you could order through the campus bookstore or from local dealers. P.C.’s Limited was not represented, and I made a note to try to get them included next year.

The Macintosh Plus was finally out, and that’s what I wanted. Oh, it wasn’t the Mac of my dreams, but it was the Mac of my 1986 dreams. The Macintosh II was a much better system, but that was two years away. We would get a lot of use out of the Plus in the meantime.

All of the girls were Mac-fluent by now, and often used the older, slower ones in the library. Having our own would greatly simplify things.

Angie had no issue at all with my buying whatever I wanted. She hadn’t tied up any of my P.C.’s Limited bonus, nor was she planning on touching most of it. Some! But not most.

Not all that much later, I had placed an order for a Macintosh Plus, an external hard drive, and a LaserWriter Plus. The LaserWriter was a behemoth! I had forgotten that they weighed nearly eighty pounds. Fortunately, they were fairly rock-solid as printers, not just as paperweights, and we probably wouldn’t be overly high-demand users.

I also ordered security cables for everything. No one was likely going to try to run off with the printer, but this was a fairly serious purchase, and we would want to set it up in some public portion of the house so everyone could share it.

Angie herself was thrilled with it. Fewer trips to the library to write and edit papers was a very good thing!

Our equipment wouldn’t arrive until after Spring Break, so I didn’t have to worry about getting it set up until then, nor about it somehow sitting at the front door or something equally silly.

Michael’s fax with the resumes came in. I just put them into my luggage. I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to read them anytime soon, and this would probably demand some serious attention, not just a skim.

Both were the standard two-page resume I was used to. That either helped or hurt. The much longer C.V.-style resume might have added context, but they weren’t common in US business. The whole point of a resume was to get to an interview, anyway, not to replace the interview. These had done that job, and that was enough.

I picked Darla up at five-thirty, wearing a burgundy shirt, khaki pants, and black socks and shoes. Darla had a dark blue blouse, a denim skirt, beige flats, and her usual glasses and ponytail (complete with Little Red ponytail holder).

Louise waved to me and I waved back. After that, we headed off to the car and thence out to dinner. Swenson’s, tonight.

“So...” Darla asked during the drive. “Any plans for tonight?”

“Maybe a burger,” I said.

She bopped my shoulder.

“I meant later!”

“Oh, we’re heading to a movie.”

She growled a bit.

“Still later! You forget that I’m not dating anyone else! I have needs!”

I chuckled, then squeezed her thigh (slipping my hand under her skirt to do so).

“Patience, Little Red,” I said. “Good things come to those who wait.”

“Actually ... that’s true,” she said, giggling. “This fall was proof of that! Still ... if you move that hand just a bit, you’ll find out I’m pretty eager.”

I did, and found out that her panties were indeed somewhat damp. Just checking made her gasp and squirm.

“You’re sure we need dinner and a movie, right?” she said.

“Patience, Little Red.”

“I’d say ‘fuck patience’ but I think...” she said. Then she stopped.

“Where was that going?”

“Um ... nothing,” she said.

“Little Red,” I said, making my voice firmer.

“Um. So. If I get too pushy, I have this feeling you’ll make me regret it.”

“And enjoy regretting it?”

“Probably,” she said, drawing it out.

“And how would I do that?”

“This is so unfair!”

“Little Red!” I said.